Visiting dead bodies is higher on more people’s city-break bucket lists than you would expect. Particularly at the height of summer, crypts designed to preserve decaying remains tend to function as a cool respite from the sweaty Plätze and piazze teeming with handbag hawkers and bulging crowds of tourists.
Tucked under the Capuchin church, Vienna’s Imperial Crypt is one such haunt. It was here that I found myself last year, imagining I was superior to the other visitors and, in some respects, confirming that assumption. Like a hair-netted Ena Sharples shaking her head at the raucous youth of 1960s Salford, my eyes twitched at the antics of my fellow travellers.
